Students often asked me what is the difference between force and torque? We might be aware about these terms that is force and torque. Let us understand the concept of force. Force according to a layman is an effort to change the state of a body from rest to motion or from motion to rest and it may also defined as an effort which tries to change the state but it may not change the state. For example, there may be heavy stone and we can try to change its state of rest but we may not be possible to do the same.

But we consider force in a straight line motion or in linear motion. If there is a rotational motion, even then we can apply a force. For example, when you rotate a handle of a door, then according to you it moves with the help of external force applied by you, but according to a physicist it moves according to  the torque provided by you.

Thus in simple words torque is provided to move a body in rotation and force is provided to move a body in linear motion.

This is the major and simple difference between force and torque.